Love
by myopichobbit
Summary: Set approximately ten years after Half Blood Prince in an alternate universe in which the war lasts for several years. Draco Malfoy contemplates the mechanics of his strange relationship with Ron Weasley.


**Love **

A Ron/Draco Fanfic by Thoreau  
**Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters mentioned herein. They are all the intellectual property of JK Rowling--I'm just borrowing them for a little while.  
**Author's notes: **Set in a time-period approximately ten years after Half-Blood Prince in an alternate-universe in which the war lasts for several years, with no end in sight. Draco Malfoy contemplates the mechanics of his strange relationship with Ron Weasley, hating but knowing that their situation allows for nothing other than what comes to pass. Written in a combination of first-and-second person, present tense. Have fun, and don't critique too harshly. I don't plan on editing this any further.  
**Rating: **M

Is this love?

The walls of this room are filthy, and no sensible man in his right mind would be here—but I am. These sheets were soiled before we put our bodies between them, but it didn't matter at the time and I doubt it does now. Your face is inches from mine and angled just so that the sunlight through the window turns that hopeless red hair of yours a gleaming hue of copper. I love your hair.

Does that mean this is love?

"Malfoy?" you murmur. Half your face is buried in a pillow, so what I hear sounds more like "Mmmphy."

I roll over onto my side and place my hand at the small of your back. Your arch towards me is instinctive, and I wonder how long I have liked it, smirked at it in bemusement, thought about it as a part of this strange arrangement that will never come to an end. "Mm. Yes, Weasley?"

You give me a loathsome look when I touch you, but don't move away. Encouraged, I lean closer and kiss the salty skin at your throat, taste the remnants of the whisky I was drinking last night on you like a pleasant dream. Your body moves with a sigh that I feel against my lips, and then your fingers are in my hair, tugging and twisting as they were hours ago. "Malfoy," you say again, and finally I pull away to meet your eyes.

It's impossible not to grin; your eyes are bright from newly awakened desire, but I can see you fighting to hold it in check. Impressive.

"Malfoy," you whisper insistently, fingers still in my hair. "We can't—after today, this has to be the last time—"

"Yes, Weasley, you said as much last night."

"I _did _tell you it'd have to end sometime."

"I never expressed an alternative belief, Weasley."

"Then why are we still—"

"Does it matter?" I interrupt with an irritated frown.

"Yes, it matters!" You sit up sharply and rest your elbows on your knees. You press your fingers into your eyes and grimace, teeth visible in an under-intimidating snarl between your lips. "It matters a heck of a lot, Malfoy. We keep _saying _it's going to stop, and it never does. I could lose my job if the Ministry caught wind of us, I could end up in _Azkaban, _frat'nizing—"

"Fraternizing."

"Fraternizing, whichever, stop it!—and what if _Hermione _were to find out? The twins are almost four now—what if she left me? What if she left me, and took the kids with her? She'd go to her mum's—that's where she went when we fought over Christmas—and her dad would take a knife to me if I did so much as set foot on their doorstep. It's too _risky, _Malfoy, don't you see? I've got too much on the line here."

"I'm running a few risks of my own with these tête-à-têtes, you know," I say through gritted teeth. "I'm not in a position to be taking chances either, but that's why we're _careful, _Weasley. That's why we exercise discretion." I reach up and run my fingers through the hair at the back of your neck, and even with your back to me I can see your sulking, hunched shoulders beginning to relax. Grudgingly, you lie back down beside me on the bed and rest your face near mine. You don't look placated yet—you look curious, which is worse, and hopeful, which is even worse than that.

"You could die, if they caught on," you murmur and lift a hand to stroke the backs of your knuckles down my cheek. "They'd kill you."

"Let it go, Weasley."

"Why're you risking everything to do this—"

"Shut up, for the love of God, just shut up," and I pull you closer under the sheets, kissing your mouth again to silence you; you obey as you never would have back in Hogwarts. I can feel a muffled protest against my lips, before you sigh with fleeting satisfaction and envelope my shoulders with your arms—so strong, when did they fill out like that, you were always a giraffe of a boy in school—your fingers tracing down the nape of my neck with expertise you didn't have six months ago. Sometimes I suspect you need this more than I do—this covert passion right under the nose of the Ministry. What is it, I wonder, that I can give you that your precious Granger can't, that your elite army of altruism can't sate in you? Have the bonds of matrimony grown too tight, too constraining already? Have you grown weary of being one of the Ministry's lesser concubines, treated with all the esteem and benevolence of a race horse past its prime?

We share a breath, mouths barely open, lips touching, and your arms tighten around me. I can feel your body pressing into mine under the sheets, your knee coaxing both of mine apart with all the gentleness of an impatient ox. God, but if you didn't compensate for it in other areas, I'd never tolerate this dreadful bedside manner of yours.

"Mm," you moan as you part from me to breathe, your lips grazing wetly across my cheek to find my ear. When you next speak your words are warm against my ear, and I shiver. "I'm going to miss this…"

Oh, but I wish you wouldn't. God, I wish you wouldn't. Your sentimentality inspires frequent, frustrating pangs of longing in my chest nowadays, and I try to ignore them. I assume my heart must clearly be mistaken when it leaps at the sound of your voice, raw and husky from desire in my ear, or hoarse and grouchy in the afterglow. I tell myself that the stirring I feel in my chest is nothing but the result of smoking cigarettes for ten years while on the run, that it will stop aching soon enough—it's not related to your blue eyes, easily burnt pale, freckled skin, or your copper hair that feels like it was designed to slide through my fingertips. It has nothing to do with your mouth against mine, your chest pressed to my chest, your body between my legs, driving passion through me like a snake bite, infusing me with venomous fervor that is going to _kill _me, Weasley, I swear by _God _it's going to be the end of me—

"Draco—"

"Ahh—Ron—"

Yours is a sharp gasp, an inhalation of breath. You bite hard on my lower lip without realizing it, making me taste the coppery tang of blood, but I don't care. I don't care about _anything _anymore—not a damn thing except your touch, which seems endless and all over my body. Ridiculous because your hands are still in my hair, fisted and tight and unrelenting. I can't move except to invite you into the very depths of me, wanting to show you everything, let you see everything, every malignant detail of the façade I constructed specifically to keep your sort from ascertaining the truth, and beyond it, to _see _the truth, to _know me._

I want you to know me, Ron Weasley, and I want you to love me despite the brand burnt into my arm and despite the gold ring that even now encircles one of your fingers, gnarled in my hair.

I want this to be love. I _need _this to be love.

I'm holding you so tightly that I hardly recognize the end when it washes over me, a blissful respite from the overwhelming and incoherent passion that held sway over me seconds before. You are still bound by it for a second or so longer, but soon the muscles in your shoulders tighten and quiver under my fingertips, and then you loosen and melt down on top of me. There is no transition between the kisses shared during our lovemaking and the kisses we share now, which are just as deep and just as intense. There is no room for breath safe for the breath that we share together, hot and moist and utterly exhausted.

We break apart just long enough to gasp breathlessly for a moment or two, and in that time our eyes meet. I can't look away from yours, those passionate blue eyes that seem consumed by a fire I have never known save for when you pour your heat into our lovemaking. I wonder what you see in mine; gray impassivity, as I see when I look in the mirror? The vulnerability and anxiety that I've kept hidden for years has been clawing its way to the surface since this began, but I can't tell by your awed expression if that is what you see on my face now—or if you're just too thick-headed to realize that you're staring.

I loosen a hand from around your shoulders and touch your face. You startle underneath my fingers, but relax into my palm after a second and kiss the juncture where thumb and index meet. "Draco," you murmur with closed eyes. I wait for you to say something more, but you don't. You don't say anything.

"Ron," I reply in a whisper.

Your hand slides up my arm to cover my fingers splayed across your cheek. I quirk a smile despite myself and twist my hand to lace our fingers together. Something smooth, cool, and metal presses against my skin.

I know I shouldn't, but I touch your wedding band distractedly with one finger. You don't realize it at first; your eyes are closed again, lips pressed against the back of my hand. The moment before your realization, you look more at peace than I've seen you in years. But the wave of guilt that follows washes away your contentment and is enough to steal away from you—away from me—your vitality. You look older, as though a weight has been redeposited on your shoulders with no hope of ever being removed again.

With extreme care, as though you're afraid of breaking me, you untangle your fingers from mine and slide your hand out of my hair. You sit back from me in the bed, letting the cold air of the motel room fill the emptiness between us. "I've got to go," you say.

"I know," I reply out of habit and school my anger and frustration away from my face.

You free yourself from the sheets and climb off of the bed. I roll over onto my side and watch as you shuffle around the room pulling on clothes and vainly trying to straighten your hair. You stand in front of the mirror for a ridiculously long period of time straightening your tie.

I sit up, but make no move to dress myself. I let my elbows rest on my arched knees. "Ron?"

Your fingers grow still on your tie, and you hesitate before turning to look at me. I know you are trying to keep your expression nonchalant, but it doesn't work. Instead you look uncertain and unhappy. "Yeah?"

And suddenly I realize what this is: this is goodbye. This is the end. I don't need to ask for your validation—it's written all over your face and in your gaze, the way you can't look me in the eye for more than three seconds without awkwardly looking down. When I answer you, no matter what I say, you will be out that door and out of my life, and the next time we meet, we will be on opposite sides of the playing field. There will never be another night spent like this in some dismally under-furnished motel room in Muggle London.

This will never be love. This _can_ neverbe love, not while we are caught in the crossfire of this miserable, pointless war.

I save us both the trouble of ruining our already cheerless lives, and I smile. "Goodbye."

Your response is an unexpected development. You hesitate, and before I can stop you, you've taken a step closer to the bed. You reach out with one hand. "Draco—"

"Ron, don't—"

"Before I go, I just want you to know that—"

I'm on my feet and across the room before you can finish, and I forcibly cover your mouth with one hand. "Don't!" I snap almost angrily. "Don't you dare, Weasley." I keep my hands on you and push you towards the door, following you until your back hits the wood. You try to touch me, but I push your hands away. You protest, but I ignore you, and when I finally have the door open, I don't give you a choice. I shove you outside and slam the door in your face. The lock obediently twists securely under my fingers.

I was expecting you to make an issue of the matter and Apparate back inside, or kick up a fuss outside and bang on the door demanding to be let back in, but you don't. From the other side of the door I hear nothing but silence, and around me I hear the slam of that door over and over again like a broken record in my head, unwilling to relent into the back of my mind like all of my other unpleasant memories. I slump forward against the door and rest my forehead against the wood, stroke the grain as I had your face minutes ago. Absently, bitterly, I wonder if you've shaved.

Then your voice, muffled by the wood, says, "I just wanted to say—I _would've_ left her for you, you know. If you'd asked me to. …G'bye, Draco. G'bye."

"You stupid prat," I start to say, but by the time I've unlocked the door and pulled it open, you're gone.

I stare, naked, at the empty corridor in front of me and for a fleeting instant wonder if I imagined your confession, your embrace, your kiss. As if to hold the fading texture of the recent past in my miserable, lonely present, I put my arms around my chest and sink backward a few steps into my room. My mouth is dry, but my eyes aren't. I can't remember the last time I felt like crying.

It's useless to waste breath on, but I do it anyway. "Ron?" I call out softly—then again, in a whisper that cracks. "…Ron?"

But all I can hear is your reply in my head.

_I would've left her for you, you know. If you'd asked me to. _

_G'bye, Draco._

_G'bye._


End file.
